Top 500 Aristotle Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action...”

— Aristotle

152. “There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip.”

— Aristotle

153. “Music has the power of producing a certain effect on the moral character of the soul, and if it has the power to do this, it is clear that the young must be directed to music and must be educated in it.”

— Aristotle

154. “God has many names, though He is only one Being.”

— Aristotle

155. “He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.”

— Aristotle

156. “The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.”

— Aristotle

157. “Each human being is bred with a unique set of potentials that yearn to be fulfilled as surely as the acorn yearns to become the oak within it.”

— Aristotle

158. “He who sees things grow from the beginning will have the best view of them.”

— Aristotle

159. “We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.”

— Aristotle

160. “Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”

— Aristotle

161. “It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.”

— Aristotle

162. “Fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”

— Aristotle

163. “Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved.”

— Aristotle

164. “The high-minded man does not bear grudges, for it is not the mark of a great soul to remember injuries, but to forget them.”

— Aristotle

165. “The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.”

— Aristotle

166. “Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind.”

— Aristotle

167. “The most important relationship we can all have is the one you have with yourself, the most important journey you can take is one of self-discovery. To know yourself, you must spend time with yourself, you must not be afraid to be alone. Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

— Aristotle

168. “Equity is that idea of justice which contravenes the written law.”

— Aristotle

169. “Change in all things is sweet.”

— Aristotle

170. “When the storytelling goes bad in a society, the result is decadence.”

— Aristotle

171. “We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace.”

— Aristotle

172. “That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it.”

— Aristotle

173. “The best way to teach morality is to make it a habit with children.”

— Aristotle

174. “The soul is the form of the body.”

— Aristotle

175. “For imitation is natural to man from his infancy. Man differs from other animals particularly in this, that he is imitative, and acquires his rudiments of knowledge in this way; besides, the delight in it is universal.”

— Aristotle

176. “Art completes what nature cannot bring to finish. The artist gives us knowledge of nature’s unrealized ends.”

— Aristotle

177. “All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.”

— Aristotle

178. “To love someone is to identify with them.”

— Aristotle

179. “No democracy can exist unless each of its citizens is as capable of outrage at injustice to another as he is of outrage at injustice to himself.”

— Aristotle

180. “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.”

— Aristotle

181. “When there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.”

— Aristotle

182. “Peace is more difficult than war.”

— Aristotle

183. “There is only one good, that is knowledge; there is only one evil, that is ignorance.”

— Aristotle

184. “The secret to humor is surprise.”

— Aristotle

185. “He is courageous who endures and fears the right thing, for the right motive, in the right way and at the right times.”

— Aristotle

186. “Happiness is self-connectedness.”

— Aristotle

187. “Have a definite, clear, practical ideal – a goal, an objective.”

— Aristotle

188. “Women should marry when they are about eighteen years of age, and men at seven and thirty; then they are in the prime of life, and the decline in the powers of both will coincide.”

— Aristotle

189. “Happiness is the settling of the soul into its most appropriate spot.”

— Aristotle

190. “We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.”

— Aristotle

191. “Before you heal the body you must first heal the mind.”

— Aristotle

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

192. “Character is revealed through action.”

— Aristotle

193. “Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.”

— Aristotle

194. “The law is reason unaffected by desire.”

— Aristotle

195. “So it is naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind.”

— Aristotle

196. “Character is determined by choice, not opinion.”

— Aristotle

197. “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity of the dissimilar.”

— Aristotle

198. “Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses and avoids.”

— Aristotle

199. “Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.”

— Aristotle

200. “The ideal man takes joy in doing favors for others.”

— Aristotle